“La sabiduría de la vida consiste en la eliminación de lo no esencial. En reducir los problemas de la filosofía a unos pocos solamente: el goce del hogar, de la vida, de la naturaleza, de la cultura”.
Lin Yutang
Cervantes
Hoy es el día más hermoso de nuestra vida, querido Sancho; los obstáculos más grandes, nuestras propias indecisiones; nuestro enemigo más fuerte, el miedo al poderoso y a nosotros mismos; la cosa más fácil, equivocarnos; la más destructiva, la mentira y el egoísmo; la peor derrota, el desaliento; los defectos más peligrosos, la soberbia y el rencor; las sensaciones más gratas, la buena conciencia, el esfuerzo para ser mejores sin ser perfectos, y sobretodo, la disposición para hacer el bien y combatir la injusticia dondequiera que esté.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES Don Quijote de la Mancha.
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31 de mayo de 2015
Goldman: How 'Grand Theft Auto' Explains One of the Biggest Mysteries of the U.S. Economy
It's easy to measure improvements in semiconductors. With video games, not so much
U.S.
productivity growth has been surprisingly sluggish in recent years,
prompting economists to embark on a lengthy quest to explain the decline and its role in stubbornly low inflation and GDP growth.
Measured
productivity growth has averaged 1.5 percent over the past decade —far
below the long-term average of 2.25 percent. While some of that decline
can be attributed to the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash and
ensuing recession, there's a longer-term trend at play here too.
A
quick glance at the breakdown of U.S. productivity shows that most of
the recent slump can be pinned to a drop in the contribution coming from
information technology. John Fernald and Bing Wang at the Federal
Reserve Bank of San Francisco, for instance, point out
that U.S. productivity growth began falling several years before the
onset of the financial crisis as the 1990s surge in
technology investment came to an end around 2003.
In
new research, Goldman economists led by Jan Hatzius, also pin the
productivity slowdown on a declining IT contribution. But they then
proceed to argue that this falling IT contribution may be an illusion.
As the economists put it, the measured collapse in in the contribution from information technology just feels
weird. In the same time period that IT productivity has supposedly
dropped, corporate profit margins have surged to an all-time high,
inflation has been very low and stock valuations —including those of
tech companies— have been surging. It doesn't seem like the overall
economy has been hit by a "major IT-centered productivity slowdown," as
they put it. So, how to explain the fall?
Hatzius and company
venture that what's happened is a major shift in the nature of the IT
contribution itself. In simple terms, we've probably been making lots of
productivity gains in IT but we just haven't figured out a way to
measure them yet.
Here's what they say:
One
reason why the IT revolution of the 1990s showed up so clearly in the
productivity numbers is that the statisticians devised ways of
translating the increases in computer performance —faster processors,
more memory, better graphics, and the like— into rapid quality-adjusted
price declines. Exhibit 4 shows that the measured price of
computer hardware has plunged by 91.5% since 1995, with most of the
decline occurring in the first half of that period.7 Since real output
is equal to nominal output divided by the price level, this meant a
sharp increase in the measured contribution of computer hardware to
real GDP growth.
But
Exhibit 4 also illustrates that the statisticians have not found a way
to capture the improvements in software and digital content in a similar
manner, with measured software prices only edging down slightly over
the past two decades. This is not surprising because the “performance”
of software and digital content is inherently a more amorphous
and subjective concept. How much better are the inventory management
systems that retail companies contract out or develop for their own
account compared with those of twenty years ago? How much better is
Grand Theft Auto V than Grand Theft Auto IV? And how much more value do
we now derive from our internet connection compared with a decade ago? It
is very difficult for a statistician to know, and when we do not know
our default assumption tends to be that there is little change.
Digital
content and software now make up more than half of the output and
market value of the total technology sector, Hatzius says. In fact, they
probably make up an even greater proportion because Apple —the world's
biggest technology company by far— is categorized as 'hardware' despite
selling a combination of hardware and software. Given the preponderance
of software and digital content, IT prices have likely been overstated
and productivity understated. Assuming that tech prices were really
falling at the 20-year average pace of the computer hardware industry of
about 5 percent a year, then that equates to a statistical
understatement of the growth contribution from software and digital
content of about 0.2 percentage points per year.
A software-induced statistical mirage probably means that GDP growth is understated too.
And that would have some major implications, according to Hatzius and co:
First,
we would be skeptical of confident pronouncements that the standard of
living is growing much more slowly than in the past. Second, given the
uncertainty around GDP it is better to focus on other
indicators—especially employment— to gauge the cumulative progress of
the recovery and the remaining amount of slack. And third, if true
inflation is even lower than measured inflation—and especially if this
gap is bigger than it has been historically—the case for keeping
monetary policy accommodative strengthens further.